User Manual

Table Of Contents
Motion Graphics and Visual Effects in
DaVinci Resolve
To begin with, DaVinci Resolve has a wealth of effects in both the Edit and Color pages for
creating titles, transforming and animating clips, compositing and creating transparency effects,
cutting mattes, applying filters, image stabilization, lens dewarping, and so on.
Then of course there’s the Fusion page, which adds considerably more powerful VFX and
motion graphics capabilities via its node-based interface and deep toolset of effects nodes,
keyframing and curve editing controls, and 2D and 3D compositing features.
To use DaVinci Resolve to the best effect, it’s prudent to begin to think of the Edit, Fusion, and
Color pages as complementary sets of controls.
For editors, the Fusion and Color pages are really just two giant inspectors; one filled
with every compositing tool you could hope to use, and the other filled with every
control for color and visual adjustment you could want, each of which are only one
clickaway.
For compositing artists, the Edit page can be considered a robust shot management
interface as well as an opportunity to do VFX work that’s deeply integrated with the
edit of the program you’re working on.
For colorists, the Edit page is a refined environment for dealing with conform issues
and taking care of myriad finishing tasks quickly and easily, that itself is only one click
away. For more information on the effects that are available in DaVinci Resolve, see the
chapters available within Part 4, “Edit Page Effects,” and Part 7, “Color Page Effects.
VFX Connect
As robust as the built-in compositing capabilities of DaVinci Resolve now are, when you run into
instances where the various capabilities found in the Edit, Fusion, and Color pages arent
enough to achieve the effect you require, you can use the VFX Connect features of
DaVinci Resolve to send one or more clips from the Edit page Timeline to Blackmagic Fusion,
the powerful node-based compositing application from Blackmagic Design, in order to do more
robust compositing and effects work there. Furthermore, the VFX Connect feature can also be
used to round-trip media to and render results from third-party applications such as The
Foundry’s Nuke, Autodesk Flame, or Blender.
This is a simple round-trip operation that lets you send clips from the DaVinci Resolve timeline
to Fusion or another application, where you’ll add effects and do whatever work needs to be
done before rendering a finished effect file that, if properly named, will automatically appear
back in your timeline. When you use VFX Connect with Blackmagic Fusion, a project file is
automatically generated and the render path is automatically named for automatic linking from
the DaVinci Resolve timeline. If you use this feature with third-party applications, you’ll need to
set up the naming of your rendered effect file manually. For more information, see Chapter 52,
“introduction to Comositing in Fusion.
Chapter – 1 Introduction to DaVinci Resolve 61